Born in New Jersey and (Now) Proud of It

Nicole Atkins, dismissing some of the early buzz about her CD, sees a definite air of tragedy but not of violence.Credit
Susan Farley for The New York Times

THE reviews, many of them glowing, are trickling in, and the singer and songwriter Nicole Atkins appreciates the kind words.

But if Ms. Atkins, a 28-year-old Jersey Shore native and leader of Nicole Atkins and the Sea, could request one thing of the music journalists, MySpacers and random bloggers who are weighing in on “Neptune City,” her Columbia Records debut, it would be this: Show some sensitivity. Her grandmother is reading.

One review on the back of the advance copies of the CD sent to critics before its July 24 release referred to “an air of danger, violence and death” in the music.

“That really annoyed me,” Ms. Atkins said. She acknowledged that “there’s a definite air of tragedy on the record,” but she insisted “there’s no air of violence.”

“When my grandmother read that, she was like, ‘What are they going to think? They’re going to think we’re terrible, that Neptune City is an awful place.’ Well, it’s not. It’s one of those sad suburban towns that’s still a great place to grow up.”

Ms. Atkins, who still lives with her parents in Neptune, says that a half-dozen years ago, she was embarrassed by her New Jersey roots and routinely told acquaintances she was from North Carolina. “I never used to want to admit where I was from,” she said over coffee in Manhattan before a recent gig in Brooklyn. “And really it was Charlotte, where I went to college, where I learned how to be a real musician. The people I met there taught me how to write songs.”

Neptune, though, is where she first picked up a guitar — a dusty one, stashed in the attic, that had belonged to her mother’s brother, who died at age 13 in a go-cart accident. As “Neptune City” makes plain, she now has a sense of pride about her origins.

“Trees, children, twilight, fog and fields,” she said, reeling off a list of favorite things found on her MySpace page. “I grew up with all that in Monmouth County, sometimes in a spooky way. And they all influence my songwriting.” Her music is a bruised, introspective indie rock that is as likely to lure folk fans as psychedelia and girl-pop enthusiasts.

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Farther afield, as influences go, there are Frankie Valli and the Ronettes, artists Ms. Atkins heard on her mother’s radio as a child.

“I found something in those old songs,” she said, “a way of singing that suited my voice, my body — the way I felt.” That explains several “female Roy Orbison” comparisons made by critics, who also noted resemblances to the Shangri-Las.

It also helps explain a scrape she got into in 2003, when her mother was still clipping want ads for her out of The Asbury Park Press, and before she assembled the Sea, her Brooklyn-based band consisting of Daniel Chen (keyboards), Dave Hollinghurst (guitar) and Dan Mintzer (drums).

Playing a Friday-night show at Kelly’s, a tavern in Neptune, she received so many requests for cover songs that they were hard to ignore: “It was, you know, ‘Have you ever heard of Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen?’

“So I got really nervous, and I got really drunk, and I did Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer.’ But I did it tongue-in-cheek,” she said. “After that, when I asked the owners, ‘What’s up for next week?’ it was, ‘Um, we need somebody who does stuff people know.’ ”

Which, it turned out, was for the best.

“I’m really proud of this CD,” she said. Searching for an image to describe it, she said, “It sounds like a big glamorous actress from the ’50s falling down the stairs.